Ninja Town (NDS)

Here is a review I wrote for indoorheroes.com about Ninja Town for the Nintendo DS -

I usually find the word “ninja” carries a negative stigma these days, where zombies, robots and pirates are used all to often to make a quick buck. Ninja Town however is the exception to this rule, with a unique enchanting style based on the adorable designs from Shawn Smith’s Shaunimanls. As a gamer, I’ve played many real time strategy titles before but I’m usually found foaming at the mouth shouting at my monitor playing a game of C&C Red alert 2, so Ninja Town was definitely a new experience for me. Ninja Town is clearly made with the casual gamer in mind but don’t be fooled there is a lot more depth here than you would think.

In Ninja Town you play the role of Ol’ Ninja master, who must protect the secret recipe of the illustrious Ninja Cookies from the evil Mr.Demon. It all sounds a bit too sickeningly adorable but the game manages to pull it off with an amusing sense of humour. The game is essentially a tower defence game where you must stop Mr.Demon’s wee Devils from passing from one side of a map to the other. This is achieved by strategically placing huts across the map that house a pair of ninjas that will fight for you. Initially upon looking at the back of the box I thought the interface looked a bit confusing especially for a more casual gamer but it is surprisingly intuitive.

Several of my non-gaming friends found the box and fell in love with the art style and wanted to try the game. The tutorial levels are great for getting you started, if not a little heavy on text but within 5 minutes they were hooked. The game also makes effective use of the DS’s interactive features, for example special power ups that send enemies flying with a gust of wind created by blowing into the microphone. For the more hardcore gamer there are multiple unit classes, stats and levelling to keep you engaged. The game also keeps you interested by adding new objectives and units as you play, as soon as you think you’ve got the game figured out it throws you a curve ball.

Ninja Town’s most endearing feature is the art style and simple crisp stylish presentation that really suits the DS well. The game also boasts a decent sound track of appropriately modernised traditional Japanese themes and hilarious sound effects but these can get a bit annoying after some sustained play time.

Being a handheld title it is essential that the game be pick up and play, each battle lasts 10 to 20 minutes so you don’t have to commit a great deal of time for a quick session. Equally it is very addictive and you can easily end up playing for hours on end if you so choose. There are 35 levels so that averages out at about 7 hours of playtime but the later levels take a bit more time and get pretty challenging so you will get your fair share of do-overs. There is also a local multiplayer mode both multi-card and single-card download play that will keep you going if you’ve got a buddy with a DS.

Ninja town almost slipped past my radar and I’m glad I got the opportunity to review it because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have seen it. If you’re a fan of RTS or your looking to start gaming, even getting a friend into gaming, Ninja town is right up your street. Tower defence has been done many times before and Ninja town struggles to bring anything drastically new to the genre, that being said I have a hard time trying to find anything really bad about Ninja Town, it truly is a solid title with buckets of charm.

8/10

Awesometown

* Visual style with loads of character
* Solid game play
* Lots of Depth
* easy to pick up

Lametown

* Later levels are nut smashingly hard
* perhaps too adorable for some